By Elizabeth Wulfhorst
HIGHLANDS – There’s a new crew in town helping kids learn about and advocate for the environment.
OPAK (Ocean Protection Advocacy Kids) began as a kernel of an idea years ago in 11-year-old Melanie Colby’s mind: a simple “magazine” for friends and family to promote awareness of ocean pollution. Fast forward 15 years and the magazine doesn’t exist anymore but the philosophy still does.
OPAK executive director Jeffrey Morgan met Colby about five years ago when they were both teaching aboard the tall ship Mystic Whaler. They combined their backgrounds of art and marine biology to reform OPAK as a nonprofit that Morgan said is creating the next generation of “ocean heroes.” The mission of the group is to teach children that “advocacy is not scary” and to “spark a curiosity that will inspire them to become stewards for their communities.”
OPAK does this through a combination of marine science, art and workshops, Morgan explained. In a typical year they would go into kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms and teach supplemental workshops. If a class is learning about whales, for example, OPAK would come in and talk about whale acoustics, tailoring what they teach with the current curriculum and incorporating art projects “that give students a really easy medium to advocate for the ocean.”
“We always define advocacy as just telling a story,” Morgan said, which makes it easier for kids to understand. “We’re really giving our students that power to know that they can make change in their environment – their local environment, their regional environment – just by speaking up.”
The programs use art because “we think art is a really easy medium for students to express what they’ve learned and to talk about what they’ve learned. And it’s also a really good reinforcement of what they’ve learned,” Morgan said. One of the art projects, “suncatcher diatoms,” coordinates with a lesson on plankton. A diatom is a type of phytoplankton which are the base of the marine food web, Morgan said. “They’re the plants that photosynthesize and become the food for the rest of the ocean.” Students use biodegradable materials to make their own diatoms after looking at them under microscopes and make them into suncatchers, “because phytoplankton need sunlight,” he explained. The art ties everything together and also gives students something concrete to take home or put in the classroom to talk about, hopefully continuing the conversation.
OPAK had been headquartered on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, but recently relocated to Highlands, where Colby grew up. Morgan said he was surprised at how similar the ecosystems are in Cape Cod and Monmouth County. He said as a nonnative New Jerseyan, he thought things would be at least somewhat different since hundreds of miles separates the two areas, but “there’s the same horseshoe crabs and bunker; there’s a lot of similar things which is awesome because we can now introduce our New Jersey students to our Cape Cod students, and they can compare and contrast.” Morgan said that has been one benefit of the virtual realm they’ve had to adjust to this year.
In addition to classroom teaching which has been cur tailed this year, OPAK offers The Blue Crew, a year-round program like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts for students in fifth through eighth grades, and summer classes as well. The Blue Crew registration fee is $65 for the year and the group currently meets twice a month via Zoom. Upcoming topics for The Blue Crew include plankton, whale acoustics and whale migration, with activities like nature hikes, science experiments, art and engineering projects, music, films and more. Morgan said The Blue Crew uses team-building exercises to get the kids to open up and voice their ideas. “We treat them like adults, we treat them like our partners in this mission to save the ocean,” he said.
OPAK also holds week-long and three-day summer programs, including Ocean Heroes Week, Marine Megafauna Week, Intro to Marine Science, Seascapes and Planet Ocean 101. The programs are divided by grade – for example, Intro to Marine Science is for high schoolers while Ocean Heroes Week is for third through fifth graders – and tuition for the programs ranges from $175 to $400. Morgan said the programs are each presently limited to eight students because of current social distancing and gathering guidelines but that could change as state mandates change. All but two of the sessions will be hybrid with morning Zoom meetings and afternoon in-person activities.
Seascapes and Planet Ocean 101 are three-day, in-person only programs. More information about the programs and how to register can be found at opakedu.org/summer-2021.
Morgan said he realizes not every student is going to be passionate enough about the environment to become a lifelong learner in that subject, but hopes everyone OPAK reaches “can take something from what we’re teaching and apply that to their passions later in life. That’s also a success in our mind,” he said.
The Two River area features several nonprofits and groups that raise awareness and advocacy for the ocean, including Clean Ocean Action, American Littoral Society, Navesink Maritime Heritage Association, to name a few. Many of them hold summer camps and yearlong programs to educate youth.
This article originally appeared in the Jan. 28 – Feb. 3, 2021 edition of The Two River Times.
